Nobody's Paradise Lost
by Admiral Godunov
Summary: They were never once a big, happy family. -drabbles, org-centric, pairings and ratings differ-
1. Chapter 1

**01: **_-incognito-_

_No soul_

_Robust_

_All dust_

_We bust justice_

_To the man with no life_

–

Hood drawn, shadowed in the darkness he carried along with him, Demyx slipped from corridor to corridor, a fleeting silhouette too quick for light to mar. Though the boots he wore had hard rubber soles, he made no noise against the solid gray-white floors. It seemed the creatures called Shadows that dwelled in the darkest corners of the castle made more noise than he with their skittering claws scraping stone.

A brilliant flash of light, the rumbling of the irritated sky, and Demyx paused for a moment, tilting his head back until the top of his hood partially obscured his vision. "I'm coming, I'm coming," his words were but the merest of whispers, lost to the dim light beyond the comforting confines of his hood. He continued on, legs striding long to carry him as quickly as possibly without running and causing a ruckus - and then an entirely different sort of rumbling sounded in the room, echoing from the bare walls, freezing the ninth member of the thirteenth order dead in his tracks.

"And what do you think you are doing here?"

Slowly Demyx turned around, flashing a wry grin at the man who'd caught him though he knew his opposite would not see it. "Visiting."

"At these hours in _my _castle?"

"It's not _yours, _Marluxia. You are simply house sitting."

Blue eyes narrowed dangerously, trying and failing to pierce into the darkness shrouding the Nocturne's face.

Demyx just continued to smile carefully, unsettlingly, trying to unnerve an opponent who could not see the source of terror.

Marluxia tilted his head, his pink hair swishing lazily to the side. "Who _are _you?"

The number nine turned his back on number eleven, and raised a hand in what could be taken for a dismissive gesture if not for its stillness after it had ascended. "Just a Nobody, going to visit a Raison d'être." And darkness swallowed him whole.

The Assassin scowled, but could find no reason to pursue. "Foolish Nobody."

-

**A/N**: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, nor am I making profit from this work of fiction. Nor do I own Persona 3 whose lyrics from the song Burn My Dread (Last Battle) appear at the start of this chapter.

I'm working on some random little drabbles and one-shots to try to break some writer's block I've had plaguing for a while, and doing so with some of my more familiar characters so I don't push myself too hard. You'll find little song lyrics of music I was listening to when writing the chapter and relate, even obtusely, to what I'm writing. So, hello again. I'll be back for a little while.


	2. Chapter 2

**02: **-_points-_

_Don't look down,_

_Don't look into the eyes of the world beneath you._

_Don't look down, you'll fall down,_

_You'll become their sacrifice._

_Right or wrong._

_Can't hold onto the fear that I'm lost without you._

_If I can't feel, I'm not mine,_

_I'm not real._

--

_1..._

It had started with a friendly (or perhaps not so friendly) game among the Organization. Xemnas was, quite possibly, losing his mind, but that made the game so absurd it was just this side of bearable.

The game itself was simple enough - the Organization members were paired with each other (usually the people they got along with worst), before promptly being sent into a dead world to fetch Heartless before setting them loose on what worlds were still alive.

_2..._

And of course sticking the Neophytes with the elder members seemed to be a sadistic passtime of Xemnas', and so Demyx, in his eternal streak of ill-fortune, found himself meandering about a murky swampland with Xigbar.

_3..._

Xigbar was not a patient Nobody, it was evident he had some kind of adrenaline addiction in his previous life, or perhaps just an attraction to danger, as though some sort of wind continually propelled him toward it.

_4..._

And so when they found themselves beset by a gigantic creature that looked to be part Behemoth, part Darkside, and part Twilight Thorn, but with the most dangerous piece of all still intact - its heart, the young musician found himself frozen in place out of fear, utterly defenseless.

_5..._

The creature charged them, bulldozing through Xigbar's frantic attacks like a rockslide through a shanty town, its tremendous weight forcing the earth beneath them to tremble. Demyx stumbled forward, as though to attack now that the stun had worn off, but cocky Xigbar held out a single gun to stop him. "I don't need your help."

_6..._

A moment later, Xigbar was flying through the trees, crashing through branches and foliage before skidding through the muck and mud that made the swampy jungle's floor. He came to a halt only a few dozen feet in front of the still-rampaging beast's feet as Demyx stood to the side, summoning the weapon he'd forgotten.

_7..._

The beast raged and rampaged through the undergrowth, leaving Xigbar on the defensive and losing badly, until the very ground beneath them began to buckle and swell, until the filthy, rancid waters surrounding them began to churn and twirl restlessly.

_8..._

And then the floor erupted akin to a volcano, right beneath the giant beast's feet, launching it ten, twenty, more feet high into the air, through the canopy of the trees, before a moment later it came crashing back down, landing on a broken tree stump that pierced straight through its shoulder, before splashing down into the deep swamp water.

_9..._

Demyx watched impassively as the once perfectly still, thick waters splashed and rippled against themselves, he watched as the beast bellowed and thrashed as it tried to keep its snout above the water despite the wound.

The Nocturne watched impassively as the greenish liquid closed over the creature's head and finally stopped churning.

_10..._

Long moments passed, neither Nocturne nor Freeshooter speaking a word to each other nor moving from their positions. Demyx didn't notice, nor did he care that the number two was gawking at him in the manner one would a beast with far too many limbs.

_11..._

Wind rustled through the trees, rippling the water gently, sending leaves from the trees down, swirling about both the combatants, until Demyx finally walked forward, toward the wide, watery abyss the creature that had attacked them disappeared into.

_12..._

And he closed his eyes and smiled, listening to the thick _thlok _noise of Xigbar's boots sinking heavily into the disturbed mud of the swampland as the Freeshooter approached before the footfalls went silent and the Nocturne knew his companion was floating in the air near him, using his powers of gravity to keep from getting any messier.

_13..._

Sea-green eyes snapped open again, and the musician motioned to a bright light peeking through the trees far in the distance. Xigbar took note of that for a moment, before sighing as though what he was about to do was a chore, and offered a hand to the Neophyte. Demyx simply walked past him, before turning back to his senior member with a perfectly empty, Nobody's smile, his sea colored eyes hauntingly reminiscent now of the swamp water that had claimed the mighty beast - cold and empty and perfectly emotionless but deadly all the same.

"I don't need your help."

He turned back and began walking across the top of the water, his footfalls making little more than ripples over the murky water.

Demyx won their little game, and was rewarded in a somewhat unorthodox way: No one picked on him save Larxene and (only jokingly) Axel. Everyone else was afraid of drowning.

-

**A/N:** I don't own Kingdom Hearts or Evanescence and their song "The Only One"


	3. Chapter 3

1**03: **-_universe-_

_Denk nach bevor du ihr urteil fällst..._

_sie gehört nicht dir, _

_doch sie ist deine Welt!_

_(Think now before you judge her..._

_She is not yours,_

_but she is your world!)_

--

He'd been to many places in his (non)existence: from the widest, wildest grasslands, to the darkest, dreariest forests. He'd climbed frozen mountain peaks, and swum far beneath the surface of the water - much farther than any normal person ought to be able to go. He'd visited castles, palaces, from industrial wasteland to desert wasteland, and everywhere between. There were worlds between worlds he'd visited, places that lied somewhere between here and there and nowhere at once, but no matter where he went, he always found some beauty in the place. He was an artist, it was in his nature to try to find beauty within the wretchedness.

But none of those places compared to the lightning-stricken planes he now found himself staring at, pallid peach they were between thick curtains of the darkest black, framed artistically, tastefully. Here and there they were marred by jagged silvery lines, splotches and rends of crimson, pools of dark blues and purples and the occasional sickly green.

Finally he managed to tear his eyes from the site before him and stare into electric blue eyes that stared mockingly back at him. He easily had half a head of height over the woman in front of him, but even so she managed to tilt her head back far enough to stare down her nose at him, to make him feel the lowliest of the low, and just as he was about to mumble something that may or may not have been an apology, the shadowy curtains shifted and a hand gently stroked over his lower stomach, forcing the muscles to twitch and spasm. He winced at the caress, and electric blue eyes flashed triumphantly before the woman turned gracefully on her bare heel, and strode through the cold corridor, uncaring that the front of her coat was unzipped, and she was wearing nothing beneath.

-

**A/N: **I don't own E Nomine or their song Deine Welt, either.


End file.
